A city that makes life easier for everyone, which uses smart technology in its public places, and that develops new ways of connecting people and improving city amenity
Climate justice literature has indicated that vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, children and immigrants, may be disproportionately affected by climate change. Yang and Juhola (2021) investigated factors that may contribute to the likelihood of climate adaptation to be implemented in European cities, including whether a higher proportion of vulnerable population impact the likelihood of the city to adopt climate adaptation policies.
Dar es Salaam, the major port city in Tanzania, is experiencing rapid population growth and urbanization. About 70% of urban development in Dar es Salaam is unplanned, and a quarter of the population resides in the Msimbazi River basin and its tributaries. Consequently, the loss of drinking water and fertile floodplains for agriculture has occurred, and the city faces recurrent floods that cause damage to infrastructure, lives, and the environment.
Resilience has become a key focus in the urban development in India, with an emphasis on blue and green infrastructure. Two notable programs, the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), aim to enhance the governance and sustainability of Indian cities through infrastructure and management reforms.
In 2100, it is predicted that global investment and maintenance cost of protection of coastal cities can go up to US$ 70 billion annually. Flooding, erosion and sea level rise are just example of hazards that coastal cities are facing both as fast and slow onset disaster. To improve their resiliency, coastal cities has adopted advance technological systems that not only useful to inform inhabitants as disaster happening but also as a tool to educate the community.
Disaster Risk Management in coastal cities includes all action, programs and measure that city government do before, during and after the disaster that minimise the loss or impact due to the coastal disaster happening and to speed up the recovery of the community that are impacted.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is a global agreement adopted in 2015 at the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan. It sets out a comprehensive roadmap and guiding principles for reducing disaster risk and building resilience to disasters at the national, regional, and global levels.
Land commodification and housing marketisation as a result of industrialisation in Chinese cities have pushed many traditional villages out of the market to make room for more profitable high-rise development. Architect Wu Liangyong pushed back by using the organic renewal concept, to repair the traditional courtyard houses in the Ju’er Hutong project.
To overcome the deindustrialisation that affected many Italian cities in the late 1990s, city leaders and decision makers promotes new lifestyle and sustainable working model to encourages new economic competitiveness and urban quality. Adaptive reuse design strategy is actively adopted to preserve the physical and cultural heritage of abandoned building and industrial sites.
In achieving great quality of life in the city, connections to digital infrastructure and services are ubiquitous. Online services as well as offline public services must be coupled together to manage the urbanisation process and communication between local government and the residents.
To express their commitment to the promotion of human rights of digital access, The City of Barcelona establish the Institutional Declaration on Technological Humanism. This declaration not only fosters the value of equity in digital accessibility but also protects the citizen right and liberties in the digital space.
Mouratidis (2021) study revealed that the quality of our built environment, including in cities influence our subjective well-being.
Study by Mouratidis (2021) explain the theoretical and empirical evidence on how the built environment that city established can influence and shape the subjective well-being (SWB) of its citizen. In this case the SWB is described as combination of three aspects, life satisfaction, emotional well-being and eudaemonia (meaning in life).
Universal Design is a design approach with the objective of creating suitable use of space, product, and environment that everyone in the society can understand, access and use easily. It does not aim for a certain group of disability but serve as much of different users as possible.
An international comparison of 25 cities, suggests that there is a need for capacity building in enhancing urban planning that promotes public health. Despite the consensus of the importance of healthy and sustainable cities, this aspiration lacks the support of measurable policy targets in the case of these 25 cities.
The design of our cities determines our health as the design influence our urban lifestyle. Urban sprawl, a city design and planning that separate different land use such as housing, offices, recreational facilities, retail stores, etc, have been proven to be detrimental to the public health.
Evidence from 282 cities in China in the span of 2009 to 2017 indicates that smart city implementation supports the improvement of urban resilience, particularly in the urban economics resiliency and social resiliency. Zhou et al. (2021) provide three recommendation for their study findings to increase urban resilience through smart city development.
In creating the most liveable city, the design of the street is one of the major areas that municipalities must pay great attention to. Many cities started to experiment on parts or blocks of a street to formulate the best design framework for improving the quality of the inhabitants’ lives.
Children who walk for their daily commute to and from school are healthier and less likely to be obese (Bosch et al., 2019). They are also better at recognising and visualising their neighbourhood through maps, explain the built environment
Play Street is an intervention of a street or parking lot temporary closure to create a place for children to play outdoors. This initiative is one way to improve not only the quality of life of the children in cities, but also strengthen the community's relationship.
Proximity to services, education and employment opportunities are the main attraction to city living. These factors are also the reason young families choose the city centre as their home. However, the city centre may not always be suitable for raising children, as the main trend of families still choose suburban living.
Despite city population that continuously grows around the world. Creating a safe and accessible city planning and design for all members of the community is not the pre-set of many smart cities.
As part of the Smarter London Strategy, the 33 local authorities are working together to create more user-designed services. This mission is a way to create Smart City that is in tune with what the citizen need. To support this, London also developed new approaches that ensure digital inclusion, so that everyone can access the public services online.
Densely built cities made from low albedo materials, lack of green infrastructure, traffic and other human activities have caused a phenomenon called urban heat island effect (UHI), where the urban air temperature is higher than the surrounding rural environment.
One way to build a strong sense of community in the city is to create high quality public spaces. Citizen well being may also improve due to the greater sense of community from feeling safe, secure and sufficient civic participation in the neighbourhood.
Adaptive reuse is a strategy of converting an existing building to a new kind of function or activities. It is a strategy that supports the smart growth of the city with its infill development while also serving as a historic and cultural preservation method.
With the advancement and change that technology brought to the urban landscape, how we use public space in urban context also changes. Streets, plaza, and parks used to be the main physical public space where people shared the city’s resources.
In the age of sensors, wireless networks, smartphones and other interactive technologies; the important role of physical public space may be overlooked. However, integrating those interactive technology can improve the qualities of physical space as de Waal et al. (2021) explains the five concepts that can enhance the public space qualities in cities
Technological innovation and economic prosperity as objectives of Smart City cannot fully succeed without appropriate citizen and community support and participation. One substantial group of the citizens that is often overlooked are children.
Bodø is a municipality located in the northern part of Norway with 51,000 inhabitants. The city is going through a major transformation as the national air force base in Bodø is being relocated by the Norway national government. The Smart Bodø program is being introduced to transform the city.
Cities that are located in coastal areas face a particular challenge due to the changing climate. Sea level rise, storm surges and floods are just some of the disastrous phenomena that threaten coastal cities. With the advancement of technology, devising ICT in the Disaster Management System has become widely prevalent for city government.
